Panasonic HDC-SD5 Camcorder w/ VW-BN1 Burner

Pros: Small, light, convienent

Cons: poor night recording,

Summary: My wife and I decided to purchase a camcorder before we went on our honeymoon. We were originally in the market for an HD camcorder with a harddrive. We were misdirected by the salesperson at Circuit City and purchased the HDC-SD5 bundle on accident! We were going to return it until we found 8 GB HDSC cards on Newegg for $30. I was extremely sceptical about how well the camcorder would work with the SD cards. In the end we grew to love it. The camcorder itself is no larger than a pop can which made it a breeze to bring along and not worry about someone lifting it off of us. The controls were easy to use although some of the functions didn't stay on (ie the fade option) It was annoying to start some recordings with fading and forgetting it on others. We are still working on how to use it so maybe we have missed something. The largest issue we have encountered so far is the focus during night recording. It has a tough time keeping focus automatically, but maybe in the manual setting it would be easier. Also, the image on the LCD screen was extremly herky jerky during night recording with the night enhancer function selected, making it tough to follow what you were recording.

The burner seems to be nice. It only utilizes -R, -R/W & -RAM DVD's. It will play only the discs that it burns so don't think you are getting an HD DVD player on top of everything else. I did a little research and it almost sounds like the DVD you burn maybe able to be played in a Blu Ray Player. (no guarntees as I haven't tried it yet)

The editing software that is supplied with the bundle is more than enough for the novice user. It allows scenes to be split so parts can be delted etc, etc.

Overall this was a good buy and glad I got it compared to an HD camcorder with a harddrive. The SDHC cards will only get larger, so this camer will have limitless memory.

I will update my review once we delve into the device a little more.